alt Hacker NewsYou're seeing the result of something that's been decades in the making. You can see a simple table of dollar reserves here. [1] They've been consistently falling year over year for the past 27 years. And it's not like 1999 was anything particular. Rather the uptake leading up to 1999 as a peak was a result of shenanigans that happened in 1971 [2]. That's when the USD became completely unbacked by anything, enabling the government to start going arbitrarily far into debt. That had short to mid-term positive impacts and long-term catastrophic ones, as is the typical strategy in modern times.
People always exaggerate the impact of geopolitical things, because it feels like the biggest thing ever, especially when you're relatively young. But in reality we're always onto nonsense after nonsense. Countries have the wisdom and view to appreciate this, and so respond to geopolitical stuff (in action, not rhetoric) far more gradually than people do. They're certainly not going to just dump all their dollar reserves because of a single misguided war or even misguided president, or they'd have been gone long ago.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_currency#Global_curren...
[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woods_system#Nixon_sho...
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How can you reconcile the rest of your comment with:
> That had short to mid-term positive impacts and long-term catastrophic ones, as is the typical strategy in modern times.
Is the catastrophe still coming from the 70s to now? 50 years later? This is the most repeated quip that makes no sense. Same with companies, everyone just repeats "omg they only care about short term" and then years after years the company trots on.
But I guess it's easy to say since the defense is "oh just wait". As if the online commenter is able to see N+1 moves more than whoever they comment about, but that person just simply cannot. Like come on.
I hear you, the world is always ending. But, I am well past mid-life, I am a huge beneficiary of Pax Americana, and 47 feels like something truly different. Maybe it's just the end of a long pattern, but it is still the end. US-led NATO is dead, and the stability of the USA is dead, therefore the dollar's dominance is weakening.
Don't take my word for it. Listen to Mark Carney at Davos.